Disclaimer: Be reasonable, people. I'm a smalltime fan fiction writer. I know I don't have the legal right to charge money to read my stories featuring characters that I didn't make up! I don't need it! All you legal owners of RuroKen, you have no infringement issues to risk from me.
Part 2
Komagata Yumi had married my father, borne him a daughter, and a few years later, buried him, so they'd told me. Then she'd married off her daughters. What does a little child know? What Yahiko and I found in her workshop was that she hadn't buried him at all. She kept him in a heavy metal cage, his eyes open, glassy, staring; arms outstretched; mouth perpetually gaping in a kind of shock; his body as if he had been alive just a moment before. I screamed the first time I saw him and immediately dashed up the stairs with Yahiko yelling, "Tsubame!" in confusion, as he hadn't actually entered the room. Rather than investigating the room, he came up to where I was curled shivering on the stairs and sat down beside me. He patted my hair until I stopped crying and managed to tell him that I had found my father. He told me that he had to see too, so he held my hand as we walked back down into her workshop.
It was better seeing him with my closest friend than alone. He was quite puzzled. My father did not rot nor decay nor stink. Such a witch my mother was, we realized, with this enchantment. He didn't know how this could have escaped everyone's notice. He was confused, not understanding with my early adolescent mind, why she had married him only to tire and transform him. Why then would she keep the body?
The alarm we felt kept us away until curiosity got the better of Yahiko, and he convinced me to go back. Many times. Repeated viewings accustomed us to the bizarre sight and wore away our terror, which he had concealed, he confessed, until we could look at him thoughtfully for extended periods. Eventually we grew bold enough to explore the rest of the items in her workroom, a few times staying too long, having to hide when my mother entered. She would crow over him, in victory it seemed. Yahiko kept wondering to me why she kept his body either, or how she preserved it.
The witch was away. Yahiko, my dark unruly-haired friend was with me, as always, and so was the demon we had discovered, who served my mother. She was on a seven-night's journey to get something or some things or a lot of things – one could never tell – for her private, household or artistic business use. I was fascinated with my father's condition and sad that I had never really known him. His relatively unspoiled condition had given us hope of restoring him and with my mother gone for such an extended period, I felt this would be the best opportunity to do so.
I had heard, from the demon, that the transformation could be reversed by laying certain sheets of cloth on his oddly dark skin. The demon told us that she had been trying to revive the body ever since he had been brought down. It didn't like her much, despite the fact that it worked for her – or because of the fact—and was bound magically to serve her until my father was revived. It had refused to tell or show her how, though she had railed and threatened and cajoled. Yahiko pointed out that it could be free of her sooner if it would just revive her. The demon sniffed and said that would please her too much and it was a demon's prerogative to be as obstreperous as it pleased.
The demon, however, was much inclined to displease my mother by reviving him in her prolonged absence and declared it would assist us in reanimating him. We three (Yahiko, the demon, and I) opened the cage, laboriously extricated him from it and laid the stiff body on the heavy wooden worktable in the center of the room, which was in line with the door and the window. The cage itself seemed to be part of the enchantment, for once out of the cage, his body relaxed; it softened from statue to sleeper. His mouth and eyes we closed at last. I never could get used to them.
The three of us set to work wrapping him with the designated cloth. I had two rolls, about three fingers' width. Yahiko had one a hand's length wide. I began wrapping them around his head, Yahiko around his middle in a modicum of modesty and the demon at his feet. When I got them around his eyes I screamed and leapt back. They had blinked! The demon cheered and told me to keep going. As I swathed the strips around his mouth and chin, a rough voice coughed and snarled at us to hurry up. Startled I obeyed.
There was an added urgency to finish. The three of us redoubled our efforts to cover him completely in the rolls of cloth, a spell, really. We finished, terrified in anticipation of unforeseen movement from the body. He blinked, sat up, and growled at us. After the first tremor of movement had passed and as we fled around the room, for he had drawn a katana from its holder on the counter, presumably his, which my mother had kept there just as she had kept the body. He was now trying to lay hold of us as we scurried out of his grasping hands and out of reach of that honed blade.
I realized the source of my confused alarm. Surely this violent man could not be the same as the doting father that Kaoru used to tell me about!
"Father!" I cried, ducking behind a barrel. "Father, it's me! It's Tsubame, your daughter! Please stop!" I pleaded. I ducked again as the blade came crashing down. He gave a yell and wrenched the sword from the wood.
Yahiko grabbed my arm and flew in terror for the window, fell out and ran right across the garden, up the path and down the hill looking for a hiding place which no one looking from above would be able to see. We crept down and flattened myself to earth in the tall grass beside the tangled branches.
I lay there crying until I came to myself in a jolt of panic. Yahiko was gone! I clambered up the hill again, panting, climbed through the window again. It was quiet and my father was gone. The room was a mess. In the midst stood Yahiko, All my mother's tools, plants, shelves were smashed and strewn on the floor. The demon pranced behind. "What are you celebrating, you imp?" he snarled at it. It made a face and disappeared. "I guess that's the end of that," he sighed. "Your dad's revived so I guess the contract is finished and the demon doesn't have to stick around anymore."
"Where is he?" I trembled.
He patted my head. "Let's go look for him. We can't let him tear the place apart, can we? What kind of servant would I be if I failed to take care of my master's stuff?"
I took his hand in both of mine as I followed him out. There was a silent trail of rubbish and ash going before us. We crept up the stairs, but no one else was there. The house seemed deserted. As we went forward through the occupied part of the house, we heard clanging and crashing. Yahiko looked back at me to give me a signal to stay absolutely quiet as we edged up the hall and opened a shoji where the noise was loudest, but it squeaked as it opened. Father's head snapped up and he bared his teeth before leaping towards us. So quickly we turned to scramble away that we fell down. We did get up and start dashing down the hall just as the katana cut through the paper. I screamed as Yahiko yanked me out of the way. He pushed me in front of him and yelled, "Run!"
I looked back and saw him pulling, pushing and throwing the furnishings and decorations in my father's way. One of the strips of cloth caught on the corner of a small table and began to unravel. "Don't look back, baka!" Yahiko hissed at me, shoving me forward. I ran and ran and ran. I had reached the other side of the closed section and collapsed as I panted. There were no sounds of pursuit. Getting up, I started stepping back the way I had come.
"Tsubame!" Yahiko called. "It's okay!"
Feeling slightly assured I stole around a corner. He was standing over my father's body. The strips of cloth had come off. There was a long trail of fabric behind him and more in Yahiko's hand. It looked like Yahiko had helped his traps to remove the bandages. The bare skin was dark and still. The part still covered was moving. He had left the bandages over most of his face, neck and torso. Yahiko looked up at me. "He wouldn't stop swearing and yelling until I took the stuff off his mouth." Crouching down beside the body, he announced. "I'm going to put this back on your mouth as long as you swear to stop screaming. You will answer our questions." The body's eyes narrowed and the rest of the face tried to scowl or glare. It was hard to tell with the mouth immovable. Finally it nodded and Yahiko put the cloth back on its mouth.
The man opened his mouth and stretched, but was silent.
"Father?" My voice wavered. "D-daijoubu-ka?" I queried.
"You – girl! Tsubame!" the mouth yelled. "Get over here right now!"
"H-hai." I knelt next to his head, across from Yahiko.
"Who are you?" he rumbled, looking at me through narrowed eyelids.
"I-I'm your daughter, Tsubame, remember? I thought you were dead!"
"I don't know you and I most certainly don't have a daughter." He snorted. "I don't have any brats, for that matter."
"Father!" I gasped, bringing my hands to my mouth as I burst into tears.
Yahiko kicked his side and he grunted. "Who're you trying to fool? Are you trying to tell us that you are not Kamiya Koujirou? Yeah, right. Why else would Yumi-san have your corpse around?"
"Yumi-san?" he murmured suddenly. "Yumi who?"
"Kamiya Yumi. She's my master and her mother. She used to be Komagata Yumi until she married Tsubame's father, Kamiya Koujirou, a while ago and had a kid. Then he died. Or at least we all thought he died. Come to think of it, Yumi-san didn't seem quite as upset about it as Kaoru, Shura or Megumi."
"Komagata Yumi?" he breathed, eyes wide and staring at the ceiling.
"H-hai," I answered nervously.
"Well, well. You may have some usefulness after all. To think, all this time…"
"F-father?" I quavered.
"Stop calling me that," he snapped. "I'm not your father. I don't even know any Kamiya. I'm Shishio Makoto. Komagata Yumi was my lover."
